A cover system in new vegas that even some enemies would use. I'd say that the shooting is, compared to modern games, NV's weak point. In skyrim, I often feel like I'm flailing until the enemy drops, New Vegas is a lot like that but with guns... stand and shoot until the raider is dead (or until I'm dead, if I've modded the difficulty).

Is it absolutely beyond the engine's ability to do, or is it just one of those things that would require incredible dedication to pull off? Mass effect made really good use of cover and I think it made the battles more interesting than it would have been if I;d just stood there and fired but, yeah, completely different engine by a million miles.

@Sirdanest There are mods in nexus that help a little with that, making enemies dodge and hide more. Unfortunately, that's just a part of Bethesda's games. Their A.I is far more A than I, even in their most recent games.

Look for Puce's tweaks or Combat Enhancer.

People have made AI tweaks that have enemies try and flank, or become more or less aggressive depending on how many of them there are/what they're equipped with, but including a cover system especially with animations, as it seems you're asking about, would be extraordinarily hard. Just off the top of my head from seeing how other mods run, that would be a really really intensive system to implement

Sirdanest wrote:

A cover system in new vegas that even some enemies would use.  I'd say that the shooting is, compared to modern games, NV's weak point.  In skyrim, I often feel like I'm flailing until the enemy drops, New Vegas is a lot like that but with guns... stand and shoot until the raider is dead (or until I'm dead, if I've modded the difficulty).

Is it absolutely beyond the engine's ability to do, or is it just one of those things that would require incredible dedication to pull off?  Mass effect made really good use of cover and I think it made the battles more interesting than it would have been if I;d just stood there and fired but, yeah, completely different engine by a million miles.

Hey OP, this sprang to mind when you mentioned enemies making better use of cover, not simply standing around.

It has made a very positive, noticeable improvement to my game (I know you where referring to close range combat but hopefully this helps ).

https://youtu.be/D8iddUNMUB8

The mod has been updated since the video, they're even more intelligent than displayed.

I was looking for something for the player too. It's unimmersive to me that I can stand still in a gunfight and hammer the fire button, and this is a valid gun-fight tactic. Doing that in, say, mass effect would be mass suicide just to site one of many examples of more modern gunfight engines.

But it's probably just too much to expect of Bethesda's now rather old engine.

I mean, they've been dumbing it down for a long time now; the ability to use each hand independently in elder scrolls was one of the only innovations that Bethesda's engine has really come up with within their own engine which they didn't transfer to fallout somehow.

Otherwise the venerable Morrowind surprisingly had one of the more complicated systems, that I haven't seen outside of something like Kingdom Come, with slashes, thrusts, bashes all damaging differently depending on the weapon being used (it's better to swing a mace, and don't try to chop with a spear if you want to live), and the armor/clothing having many body parts and a good layering system.

@Sirdanest OK, so

This one to make combat responsive. Enemies will visibly react to getting shot, instead of just continuing to fire at you as if nothing was happening. Works for the player as well, forcing you to find cover.

https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/66646


This one to improve the way NPCs fight. They'll look for cover, attack you from longer distances, be more responsive to your actions, etc

https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/58431

These two for overheating and recoil respectively, so that weapons feel more like weapons.

https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/49892

https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/61973

This one for realistic damage (the second one is an update). Damage becomes more significant, making the game more of a real fight and less of a battle of statistics. No longer enemies taking 20 shots to the head and continuing like nothing happened. I recommend the alternative version.

https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/35335

https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/54936

This so that NPCs can miss, otherwise you'll find drugged up ghouls sniping you from 100 meters away, and with the modded damage mechanics, that can be a problem. The default version tends to make every single character shoot like they're drunk, (like 2:00 am, bachelor's party drunk), so you may want to try the medium accuracy one, or the high accuracy one, if you like the challenge.

https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/65817?tab=description

This one is a bit gory (or, very gory actually), but realistic. NPC react to their limbs being crippled, falling to the ground and crawling, or panicking.

https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/67147

This one to make armor more significant, because you shouldn't be able to kill someone clad in power armor with a 9mm pistol.

https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/63860

And yeah, that's about as good as it gets.

The b42 mod collection seems to be a huge bundle of absolutely game changing ideas that I'm not sure will ever come to be. Last I heard it was delayed indefinitely.